Sunrise at Patoka Lake

Pleasant colours and the foreground ice makes for an interesting subject. Looks like it's out of focus, though. Using the rule of thirds may have been more effective than the 50/50 split that you went with, since the upper sky is rather empty.

I do agree. Let me "chop" off some of that sky. In all honesty, this photo here is what it looked like before I worked on it.

This is an amazing subject, but the lack of focus is a major problem. Crop about 1/2 of the sky in the original post, so you have 1/3 sky, 2/3 Lake. The crop from the left was a good idea but you could probably include a lttle more (up to the grasses at bottom)

I'll echo Stan's suggestions exactly. The light is lovely, and I'm guessing that's ice? Gotta love how ice picks up the light!

I like the light and color and the lines in the FG are very interesting. I do agree that cropping part of the sky out leaving about 1/3 of it would give a better comp.

Love the light and pattern of the ice. The suggestion of cropping 1/2 of the sky would help focus the viewer's attention on what really shines, that ice. Nice work.

I'm not great on the whole measuring deal, but here's the after of cropping out alot of the sky. The problem I notice is the the rising sun make the trees look blurred out, but I also had it on manual focus so it focused on certain parts. Is there anyway that I can put the whole frame in focus? I know that's probably a dumb question, but it's worth asking.

Nice colors and I like the foreground patterns, but I have to agree with the others on the apparent focus issue. As far as your question, you can typically get the entire frame in focus by focusing at the "hyperfocal point," which can be just a few feet in front of you if you're using a wide angle lens at f/11-f/16 or thereabouts. You can find a ton of information and some charts on the web if you do a search. I think there's even an older article here on NPN about it. There's also the notion that focusing 1/3 the way into the scene should get you sharpness from front to back, but that's just another (rough and sometimes ineffective) way of approximating the hyperfocal distance.

Okay, I think I figured out the whole DOF and focusing, so I will be working on that my next trip up there, it will be very much daylight so I will be able to tell whether it's in focus or not. Problem is, I don't think my lenses have an f-stop of f/16, my Sigma lens is 1:4-5.6. This photo was f-stop 4.0 with my regular lens that came with the camera from the factory. I mean I'm learning one thing after another, and yet the whole f-stop still gets me a little confused because I'm not always thinking about that.

I think what you're referring to is the maximum aperture for your lens . . . every lens out there can be set to f/11 or f/16, which is usually (as a very general matter) the range where you'll want to be to capture maximum depth of field while not significantly sacrificing image quality (which degrades with smaller apertures, but that's another story). You should check out a book called "Understanding Exposure" by Bryan Peterson . . . it's a fairly easy read and you'd come away understanding all this stuff quite well. It certainly helped me when I was in your shoes.

And of course, check out the manual that came with your camera for info on how to change the aperture of your lens.

SEE! These numbers get me confused! One minute I think I got it, next minute I am confused and lost again. Lol, but unfortunately I don't learn too well from reading books, I must go out and keep this stuff in mind and work on them, this next new challenge should be fun. Oh before I forget, what about when using Auto Focus? Because I use that mainly for action shots and around animals, but sometimes I leave it on even for landscapes like this, does it affect the f-stop?

There are a lot of books on photography and Photoshop that are pretty tough to learn from, I agree. The one I recommended is an exception. But if you don't want to go the book route, which I understand, then just use manual mode (aperture/shutter speed settings) and experiment next time you're out shooting. If you choose a scene with lots of stuff at various distances, you should be able to see the difference between various apertures on your LCD or when you get back home . . . hint: it won't show up through the viewfinder unless you press the "depth of field preview" button on your camera, which often makes the viewfinder so dark that it's largely useless.

Manual focus does not affect the aperture. Whether you use autofocus or manual is largely up to you . . . autofocus is often just plain easier assuming there's enough light. I could write several paragraphs on when I use one or the other, but I'll stop for now.

Thanks so much, I will definitely be trying those options on my next outing.

Andrea, I really like your cropped version, just what I was thinking with my first comment. I also like the pano shape of the photo and the color of the picture gives a whole different mood than before. As far as the whole aperature thing goes this was my trick to help me remember before I got more familiar with it. Bigger is better, so for example the bigger the F number the more DOF you will have. (Just like money, the more you have, the more you can purchase.) Hence,the smaller the F number the less DOF you will get. I hope this can help.

You know what's funny? I was just out taking photos of my brother-in-law's forktruck that he's selling, just for fun I put my camera in manual mode and noticed where the F10 was while my shutter was at 1/80sec and my exposure control was acting weird, but I figured it out so yay I learned something! Let's just hope I can keep it in my head.

John Kerr, that makes a whole lot of sense, and I have a photo here I am posting with this comment, unfortunately I had to redo this cause I forgot to resize it and my paragraph I had on here did not survive the refresh and back button. This photo had a lot of the sky cropped out, but again I was ignorant of f-stop at this time so it isn't very focused pass the ice, but I was mainly focusing on the ice and the sun's reflection. Thanks to my fellow photographer buddies, I have learned something new or at least have it more ingrained in my head than before. My next sunrise outing to Patoka Lake will have photos that will make you all very proud of me